Free True Sisters by Sandra Dallas

hour ago. There will be a service after prayers. We’ve wrapped her in her counterpane, and Thales has asked some men to dig a grave. Brother Martin will conduct a service.”
    Jessie took her friend’s hand. “She was so good to us. She taught even me to love poetry.”
    “She was a grand teacher, oh yes. Why, did you know that she had not intended to teach at all, but when Mr. Smalls died, she had those three small children to raise, and as no one else wanted the job of teacher and she was willing to work for half the pay, she was given it. No one expected her to achieve success.”
    “But she did. She taught us literature, music, philosophy, and even manners in addition to reading and ciphering. I had not planned to stay in school beyond the sixth term, but she captivated me, and I had more years of schooling than my brothers. I was pleased when she was baptized and agreed to go to Utah, although I knew she was distraught that her children did not accept the faith and that she had to embark on her own.”
    “I’d thought she would teach my children, just as she taught you and me at home,” Louisa said.
    Without thinking, Jessie glanced down at her friend’s stomach, but Louisa shook her head. “How did she die?” Jessie asked. She had seen the woman on the trail, pushing a handcart with a young couple, but had not talked with her.
    “She died praising God,” Louisa replied.
    “Yes, of course, but what was the cause?”
    “She caught a cold. It went into her chest and turned into pneumonia. After they reached camp this evening, she begged to sit down for a few minutes, and when the others went to fetch her, she was in a delirium.” Louisa looked away. “Thales says it was a lack of faith.”
    “How could he! The idea!” Jessie was indignant. “What does faith have to do with catching a cold?”
    Louisa shrugged. “Thales says if our belief is strong enough, we will make it. God does not want to take into His kingdom those who question their faith.”
    “Mrs. Smalls was as strong a believer as you and I,” Jessie said.
    “Perhaps in her heart she was not.”
    “Perhaps, but not likely.”
    Louisa looked away. “I wanted to tell you. I know you loved her.”
    “Yes, I did.” And I do not love Thales Tanner, Jessie thought. She watched her friend turn and walk back toward her own cart, wondering what would happen if Louisa fell sick. What would Thales say about her then?
    She squatted down next to the fire, where the dinner was already burned. It wasn’t the first time.
    *   *   *
    Prayers were over by the time Robert and Maud Amos reached the camp. In the darkening light, Maud looked at her old fellow. They were too aged to make the trip. They’d both known that. They’d had no children to tell them nay but plenty of neighbors to call them fools. Their friends of long years had questioned Maud and Robert’s sanity in selling their few possessions and starting off on the long ocean voyage to America. And not even to a big city such as New York, but to a place nobody had ever heard of before the Mormons came into the Midlands village with their preaching—a valley in the far west of America without even the barest of creature comforts.
    “In the going down of your years, Mrs. Amos! You ought to spend them on your settle in the chimney corner, toasting yourself by the fire,” the cottager on the east side of her house told her. “And with Mr. Amos. The shame of it!”
    “Lordy, Maud, if the wolves don’t get you, the wild Indians will. And where will you be buried? Do they even have cemeteries in that country?” the neighbor to the west asked.
    “I expect so, unless Americans live forever, and in that case, we would fare right well,” Maud replied.
    “You’re not much in the habit of traveling, I think. I’ve seen you walk down to the market, and you couldn’t any more walk across America than you could fly over it. And pushing a wheelbarrow, too! You’ve took leave of your